Category:Obit

What do we say to our dearly departed when out on a public domain? Our newspapers feature death notices daily but nary an obituary, the personal but slightly distanced profession of respect, reminiscence and regrets. The obituary is an art form that has never taken hold in Singapore, the textual column of dedication by a new journalist cutting his teeth or someone trying to come to terms with grief. It is our custom to frame our dead within boxes of rigidly determined sizes that stand like gravestones at the far end of the newspapers, sandwiched perversely between sports and business news.

An obituary celebrates the dead yet is impelled by loss, and for this reason pursues an ambivalent existence. This is opportune material for Grieve Perspective, a dark-hearted Singapore-based art collective who are as in love with words as they are in fear of the image that overruns its boundaries.